Do You Need a Virtual Marketing Department?

Let's face it, not too many people go into business for the pleasure of finding clients and customers.  People go into business because they have a unique idea for a product or service that they feel there's a need for.  Their pleasure is in delivering the product or service and seeing the results.  Deriving pleasure from developing market awareness, drawing prospects into a store or website, delivering the call to action and closing the sale, not so much.

The same is true for small businesses.  The focus is on revenue generation.  Again, delivery, not prospecting is often the organizational priority.  Entrepreneurial startup or small business, it's the same story, marketing has got to happen, but it's just another expense with hit or miss results.  Without it, you will not grow, with it you're hitting the bottom line with no guaranteed return on investment.

One of the problems is that so many people are taken in by the one sure fire way to launch their business into the stratosphere.  So called gurus make big promises if you just sign on to their program focused on just one or two marketing tools.  This usually involves the expenditure of a great deal of money over a short period of time.  By the time you realized that you have nothing to show for your investment, they're history.

Marketing is not about blowing your budget on single events or campaigns.  It's not about trying to hit a home run using one promotional scheme.  It's not about short-term efforts when you're looking for long-term gains.  And it's not about how much you spend.

You do have to spend something.  There will be hard cost to many of the things you do, but don’t think they need to be burdensome.  With hard work and some creativity you can accomplish great things without a large investment of precious capital. A well thought out plan can flex with your budget.  If sales are down, that’s a bad time to stop marketing.  It’s a good time to shift to more labor intensive campaigns versus media buys and printing new collateral material.

Marketing is about persistence, coordinated campaigns using multiple tools, delivering a common theme and communicating your distinctive message to the right audience.  Marketing is about using unconventional techniques to reach conventional goals.  Your goal is profitability achieved by building lasting relationships with people and companies in your target market.

If you want to grow your business, but don't have a marketing department to make it happen, use a virtual marketing department.  You'll have a fixed cost each month to provide the level of effort you can afford and that is appropriate for the goals desired.  With a real marketing plan, you can make sure you don't throw good money after bad.

Make sure you use someone with real knowledge and not just unfounded claims of grandeur.  Look for a business with people with a variety of marketing and management experience and not just a single point of focus to manage your strategy.  A good firm will know when it’s time to call in the experts on a particular tool or technique and not be bashful about not having everything in-house.  No one does, not even the giants in the business.

Find a firm that clearly understands that the goal is to make you money.  There should be no questions about that.  Your return on investment is paramount.  No one can guarantee how much new business your marketing campaigns should bring in, but there should be a target and the results should be tracked.

Development of a marketing strategy is always a work-in-progress.  Converging on campaigns that work, discontinuing those that don’t and always exploring new ideas to secure your target market, introduce new products and services and migrate and up-sell existing customers.

The important thing for any business is to have a strategy, a marketing plan and a budget they’re committed to in order to make their business grow.